Far From Powerless
by CNwamadu
Summary: Can a cripple become a Huntsman? . . . Everyone around him thinks not, but perhaps, this deformity that has long led to his abuse can be used by him instead — a mighty weapon he can learn to wield for his own purpose.


**Far From Powerless**

...

Can a cripple become a Huntsman? . . . Everyone around him thinks not, but perhaps, this deformity that has long led to his abuse can be used by him instead — a mighty weapon he can learn to wield for his own purpose.

...

I was thinking hard in one of the stalls of the Arc family house, as I was shoving my shirt into my jeans and tugging up my zipper. Preoccupied, I flushed, picked up my book bag, took my cane down from the hook, and unlatched the door. So many movements unbalanced me, and as I pulled the door open I fell over backward, landing fully clothed on the toilet seat with my legs splayed in front of me: the old beetle-on-its-back routine. Saturday afternoon, the building deserted, I was free to laugh aloud as I wriggled back to my feet, my voice bouncing off the white tiles from all directions. Had anyone been around, I'd have been still and hot with chagrin. I decided it was time I considered my options.

Should I cut my loses and remain at home, picking among the range of mundane professions? Or should I continue on my dreams of becoming a hero, despite my disabilities.

The real question, however, was, can a cripple become a Huntsman?

There's a saying, 'Nothing is impossible if you put our mind to it.' Yet I am sure that the person that stated it hadn't considered a situation such as mine in mind when he opined.

I haven't always been crippled, a fact for which I am soundly grateful. To be whole of limb is, I know from experience, infinitely more pleasant and useful than to be crippled; and if that knowledge leaves me open to bitterness at _my_ loss, the physical soundness I once enjoyed (though I did not enjoy it half enough) is well worth the occasional stab of regret.

Though never any good at sports, I was a normally active child. I climbed trees, played hopscotch, jumped rope, skated, swam, rode my bicycle, sailed. I despised team sports, spending some of the wretchedest afternoons of my life, sweaty and humiliated, behind a field-hockey stick and under a basketball hoop. I tramped alone for miles along the bridle paths that webbed the woods behind the house I grew up in. I swayed through countless dim hours in the arms of one sister or the other under the scattered shot of light from dust-lamps. I pushed baby carriages, ran errands in the rain, marched tirelessly under scorching heat in a feeble protest against unfairness to male species.

When I was eight I started to trip and drop things. What at first seemed my natural clumsiness soon became too pronounced to shrug off. I, accompanied by my parents of course, consulted a neurologist, who told me that I had a brain tumor. A battery of tests, increasingly disagreeable, revealed no tumor. About a year and a half later I developed a blurred spot in one eye. I had, at last, the episodes "disseminated in space and time" requisite for a diagnosis: multiple sclerosis. I have never been sorry for the doctor's initial misdiagnosis, however. For almost a week, until the negative results of the tests were in, I thought that I was going to die right away. Every day for the past nearly nine years, then, has been a kind of gift. I accept all gifts.

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic degenerative disease of the central nervous system, in which the myelin that sheathes the nerves is somehow eaten away and sear tissue forms in its place, interrupting the nerves' signals. During its course, which is unpredictable and uncontrollable, one may lose vision, hearing, speech, the ability to walk, control of bladder and/or bowels, strength in any or all extremities, sensitivity to touch, vibration, and/or pain, potency, coordination of movements — the list of possibilities is lengthy and, yes, horrifying.

One may also lose one's sense of humor. That's the easiest to lose and the hardest to survive without.

In the past seven years, I have sustained some of these losses. Characteristic of MS are sudden attacks, called exacerbations, followed by remissions, and these I have not had. Instead, my disease has been slowly progressive. My left leg is now so weak that I walk with the aid of a brace and a cane; and for distances I use an Amigo, a variation on the dust-powered wheelchair that looks rather like a dust-powered kiddie car. I no longer have much use of my left hand. Now my right side is weakening as well. I still have the blurred spot in my right eye. Overall, though, I've been lucky so far. My world has, of necessity, been circumscribed by my losses, but the terrain it left me has been ample enough for me to continue many of the activities that absorb me: writing, raising my sisters and dog, reading, watching my favorite shows and cartoons, playing video games to some extent.

It is not to say that I like or enjoy being in my condition. I hate it. My life holds realities — harsh ones, some of them — that no right-minded human being ought to accept without grumbling. One of them is fatigue. I have read of no one with MS who does not complain of bone-weariness; in a disease that presents an astonishing variety of symptoms, fatigue seems to be a common factor. I wake up in the morning feeling the way most people do at the end of a bad day, and I take it from there. As a result, I spend a lot of time in extremis and, impatient with limitation, I tend to ignore my fatigue until my body breaks down in some way and forces rest. Then I miss picnics, dinner parties, shows, the brief visits of distant families from out of town. The offspring of a puritanical tradition of exceptional venerability, I cannot view these lapses without shame. My life often seems a series of small failures to do as I ought.

Due to this, my parents vehemently and without conscious effort, had shut down my attempts at persuasion. With reason I know, but it still doesn't change the fact that my situation had determined my future.

I was restricted from training, but I was encouraged to read. And I did. Books of all kind and genres were absorbed in a haste powered by boredom. My academics flourished as a result.

What didn't, was my social life. Of course with the attention my disability brought me at its early stage, I was treated nicely and even to an extent quite popular with the kids in school. But soon, days turned into weeks and the novelty my disability brought wore off. The next time I came to school was to boos and jeers. I stopped going ever since, contented in reading from our rather extensive library or from the books my parents purchased.

Out of all the activities I missed, the one that hurt me the most was the outdoor activities. I will never run again, except in dreams, and one day I may have to get up to a reality that I will never walk again. My camping days are over. You know the saying, 'You never know what you have until you lose it'. Yeah... I never knew how much I enjoyed the little things like camping, going to the bathroom without needing someone to bathe me until I couldn't do it without aid. Of late, I have begun to catch myself wondering how people can propel themselves without canes, or if somehow, my semblance will gift me the ability to fly or telekinesis. With only one usable hand, I have to select my clothing with care not so much for style as for ease of ingress and egress, and even so, dressing can be laborious.

On the topic of aura, it was unlocked in a desperate bid to see if the soul-energy could heal my deformity. Obviously, it didn't. Aura could only heal physical injuries, basically any surface wound. Internal injuries requires medical science. The exceptions are those which semblance are enhanced healing or a variation of it.

Back to topic. Despite my situation, I still want to become a Huntsman. I still want to be hero, but no more for the glory and fame it brings. Rather, I want to prove to all my haters out there that it doesn't matter my problem, doesn't matter my state of being, I can accomplish anything I put my mind to

With that decided I used my one good arm to heave myself up and out of the toilet. At least the aura's good for something.

Forgetting I had only one usable hand, I reached for my cane with my deformed hand. A gasp died on my lips as my palm slipped down the length of the cane, my body following in its wake.

Then darkness.

. . .

"Jaune!"

I heard my eldest sister, Saphron, calling my name but I felt so comfortable as I was, I didn't want to wake up yet.

"Ye Ol' Jaune!" She called again.

That's it. Now I'm irritated. I am going to wake up and give her a piece of my mind for giving me that ridiculous nickname.

Opening my eyes I saw I was surrounded by my family, every one of them present. My mum, who sat beside me on my bed, held my hand.

At that moment, tears leaked past my eyelids. What would have become of me if my family didn't support me?

It was to my eternal relief that my sisters and parents didn't desert me at the onset of my issue. Rather they have stuck by me. I know they didn't like being faced with a crippled brother, or son in the case of my parents. I know, deep within, that they hate, of course, to be different from their peers, and a child who has someone like me as a brother tacking down the aisle of a school auditorium packed with proud parents like a Cape Cod dinghy in a stiff breeze jolly well stands out in a crowd. Deprived of legal escape, the child can at least deny their sibling's disability, even his existence, forgetting to tell him about recitals and PTA meetings, refusing to accompany him to stores or arcades or the movies, never inviting friends to the house. Many do. So I will forever be grateful for them being among the 10% that looked past their sibling's deformity and carried on as if everything was going to be better, despite it seeming like it could never.

Sure, we have had countless arguments in which my disadvantage was used against me or in jest but. . .in the end, I knew the spiteful words were fueled by anger. And though anger makes one speak their innermost truth, I knew in the end that they would come around. And they did. Apologizing, sometimes with words, but most times with their deeds.

I loved them furiously for that.

"I hate that," I mumbled.

"Hate what?" My mum questioned.

"Ye Ol' Jaune." I could barely keep my eyes open, though I still heard the chuckles from the rest of my family members, the most prominent coming from the offender herself. I wasn't fully awake, my body and mind still tired despite the rest I had. An effect of the MS. "It's stupid and childish, just thought you should know." After I felt I had made point, I let my body and mind go into the sleep it desperately wanted.

The next time I awoke was to a burning determination to achieve my goals. I couldn't see myself having a normal life without regretting never trying. If I am to go there and not get accepted, I will come back home, the only thing lost being money, time and my pride.

Using my hand, I pushed myself up to a sitting position. Grasping — but this time with my good hand — my cane, I used it as an aid and stood up, taking my first step into the realization of my dream.


End file.
